"At my age, I have been right enough times to be unafraid to speak up and wrong enough times not to be offended if someone tells me "You are an idiot." Hat tip to Dennis Gorman, Esquire: Raconteur, Renaissance Man, Curmudgeon, and Dear Brother In Christ
Copyright 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015 by Michael R. McCarty

28 September 2015

WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH A “DO-NOTHING” CONGRESS?

With the departure of Speaker Boehner, the “livid
left” has once again trumpeted its disdain for what its denizens call the
do-nothing Congress.What they are
really doing is expressing their continued disdain for the United States Constitution.

Why
do I rant? Well, anyone who reads the
Constitution and studies the Constitutional Convention will quickly realize
that the Framers intended for the Congress to do very damned little. First, they intentionally strictly limited the
powers of the central government. It was
to do those things, and only those things, that needed to be uniform in order
for the Nation to survive: provide for
the National defense, institute a single foreign policy, provide a postal
system and a system of roads to connect the States, introduce a single
currency, and set up a uniform system of tariffs to control the importation of
foreign goods.

Everything
else was left to the States as the best source of government for the
people. Want to introduce an expensive
and far-reaching system of public welfare?
Do it, but don’t insist that your neighboring states adopt your
plan. Want to fund and organize a system
of public education? Great. Do it.
Pay for it with taxes you raise locally.
Manage it by a system of local school boards that will decide what needs
to be taught. They are right there and
know best what the children of their locality need to be taught. Want to allow workers to organize in unions. It is your State. Have at it.
Once again, don’t insist that the other states follow your lead. The voters of those states can decide for
themselves. And for Heaven’s sake, keep
Washington, DC out of your State, except to the extent that it has been
delegated powers in the Constitution.

To
ensure limited federal government, the Framers loaded the Constitution with
protections for the people from the government.
First and foremost was the system of checks and balances, the system
that President Obama and the Democratic Party find so loathsome today. In order to enact a law, majorities in both
Houses of Congress and the President must agree. If a proposed law cannot garner that support,
the Constitution says, in effect, it is probably a bad idea and should not be
imposed on the people and the States.
Give the President the authority to veto a bill that has made it out of
Congress. If the super-majorities needed
to over-ride a veto cannot be reached, it was probably a bad bill and should
not have been enacted into law. And give
the Congress, especially the House, the power of the purse.

“The
power of the purse.” The great check on tyrannical
power that my generation had to understand.
If, somehow, a bill was enacted into law, and the voters changed the
makeup of the Congress, the Legislative Branch could limit or prevent the
Executive from carrying out a particular law by with-holding funding for that
purpose. Today, we incorrectly call that
“shutting down the Government.”

Why
do I say “Incorrectly?” It is because
the professional politicians in Washington, with their three-day work weeks and
lengthy recesses no longer frame, debate, and enact individual spending bills
for the various departments of the Executive Branch. They could, but that means that the first business
of the federal government will be to stay in Washington and work out those
spending bills. Instead, it is considered
better from a political point of view to lump all spending authorizations into
a single omnibus bill that “must be signed.”
Recently, the Republican Party has balked at that blatant attempt by the
Democrats to perpetuate the bread and circuses system it has imposed on
America. Constitutionally appropriate
that might be, but people like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Presidents
Clinton and Obama, have placed party above Country and have, instead, resorted
to a beautiful—if corrupt—public relations campaign to mislead and outright lie
to the American people about the Constitutional duties of the Legislative and
Executive branches.

Because we spend so much time in high schools teaching
about truly unnecessary subjects, what my generation knew as “Civics” has
pretty much disappeared from the curriculum.
When I graduated from high school back in the ancient days of the early
60’s, there were only two tests that students in Illinois were required to have
passed in order to graduate: one on the
United States Constitution and one on the Illinois Constitution. Today, Pennsylvania has a whole series of
tests administered all through elementary and middle school to measure reading
comprehension and math proficiency. High
School students take three “Keystone Tests” in Algebra
I, Literature and Biology. Observe, if you will, gentle reader, that our
students will probably have read all sorts of obscure literature but not the
Constitution. Now, I am all in favor of a solid classical education which exposes
our students to the great prose and poetry of the English language, and even
some of the garbled 20th Century junk that is passed off as great
literature, but the sweetest use of the English language that I have ever read
is still the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Our students can tell you all about the
Harlem Renaissance and their rights under the Constitution, but don’t have a clue about how the Constitution is
supposed to work, that rights come from our "Creator", not the Constitution, and that their ignorance is harmful to the future of our Nation.

So,
I implore the great American people to insist that we replace Langston Hughes
with James Madison as required reading.
Only if Americans really understand the Constitution and the system that protects us our freedoms
to read and write and sing and pray and speak without fear of policing by the
Government in Washington will we truly be free.

About Me

I am, first and foremost, a child of God, saved by His Grace through His Son, Jesus. I am father of 8, including my four little Angels who are waiting with the Master who loves the little children) , and grandfather of the two smartest and most photogenic grandchildren in the world.
And to quote Lee Marvin, "once, by God, I was a Marine."
I am an admirer of all sorts of fire arms. I consider the Second Amendment to be the guarantor of all of our other constitutional rights.
I think there ought to be a Constitutional Amendment outlawing the Designated Hitter and the insane practice of awarding World Series home field advantage to the league that won the All-Star Game.
I am kept safe and well-shepherded by Ava T. Dog.